Devil Dean Calls Obama "Bin Laden"

Most people know Dean Singleton as the owner of the Denver-based MediaNews, Inc., a man who loves to buy newspapers like the L.A. Daily News and Long Beach Press-Telegram so that he can slash salaries, bust unions, earn huge profits, and generally quicken the destruction of print journalism. (His effort to buy the OC Register a few years back failed, but now he's using their copy to allow him to lay off his own reporters).

But did you know that Singleton also happens to be chairman of the board of directors of the Associated Press. It was in that function that Singleton attended the AP's annual luncheon today in Washington D.C. The event's guest speaker: presidential hopeful and Democratic front-runner Barack Obama. That's Obama, not Osama, as some in Fox News and other right-wing circles would have you believe. But don't tell that to Singleton, who introduced Obama to the crowd and, after the speech, re-read questions from audience members into the microphone. One of those questions, in Singleton's translation, had to do with Iraq, Afghanistan and "Obama bin Laden."

So there you have it, folks. The man who is speeding the destruction of print journalism, the very industry that has made him a bazillionaire, is also a fucking moron. Additional proof: the only other famous numbskull who made the same mistake is CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is managing editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).